The best-kept secret in Greece has to be the food. I’m not talking about gyros or that other bland tourist-y stuff, I mean the real thing: steamed zucchini in lemon olive-oil sauce, stuffed grape leaves, and cheese pies with a crust that is so bready you can dip it in the leftover olive oil on the bottom of your tomato-and-cucumber salad. The fruit and veg are fresh here, sweeter somehow, as if they have been left to ripen on the tree (which they probably have). Later on in the summer, our neighbors’ fig trees will be overrun with so much fruit they will be giving basketfuls away. And this isn’t even in the countryside. No, whenever my family visits Greece we opt to stay in the suburbs outside Athens, just a couple of blocks away from the city’s first public beach. It is beautiful here, more beautiful still when figs are in season because I have to admit that I like figs the way that I love chocolate–a lot. You could even call it passionate. Let’s be honest here: if I could I would have a love affair with figs and chocolate.
Greece’s second best-kept secret has to be my grandmother, though. She is what some people like to call a character. Last night my aunt was telling me that the last time she and my grandmother spoke on the phone, poor Yaya was very upset, so much so that she ended up ending the phone call abruptly because she needed to go lie down. Why was she so upset? Well, she had only relieved herself once that day instead of the obligatory two times. We take our bowel movements very seriously here. And she loves to sing. If she could, she would sing almost all the time. She can sing even when there is no music to sing to. Her hands hurt her when she plays the guitar, so she has lent her father’s own antique instrument to my brother on the condition that he learns the songs she loves to sing so that they can make music together.
So for the next four weeks this New Yorker will be in Greece, land of good food, sunny days, and my grandmother’s songs. And this makes me very, very happy.
–Marie-Irene
badpoetree 